re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

My wife works in administration for the Technical College system. Formerly called "trade school." They put "college" in the descriptor now because... it includes college-level classes... trades require college-level classes. There's no more work for welders just to make simple joints, robotics do that 24-7 without ever calling in sick or taking a piss-break or sleeping. Welders now have to do thing machines can't, and that requires some advanced math calculations or the ability to understand those instructions.

And the problem they have with students here is that they drop out when they hit those classes, because they're usually coming from bad academic backgrounds (most of them have to finish high school equivalency programs before they can start the trade education).

As far as education and the trade positions, what happened was that the Baby Boomers were such a huge generation that they filled up all the positions and then held on forever. When I was in high school they regularly told us NOT to expect to get a job at a plant or refinery like people were used to around here because increased automation was going to cause layoffs and they already had more people at the time, generally, than they needed. But there became a divide... "working class" kids mostly either moved up into being academically proficient kids who went to college or slid down into being academically deficient kids who increasingly didn't finish high school. Very few were in the middle and ready to move into the trades, and as the Boomers did start to retire or, uh, expire, that created the gap. My wife's job is to get people who are realizing that not having a high school diploma is not making a great path and get them started on finishing that, and then into Techincal College. Her job is pretty damned hard... even if people are willing they've got a lot of catching up to do.